This invention relates to a textile product and to the use of a backcoating on the textile product that includes intumescent particles which provide enhanced flame and/or smoke retardant properties to the textile product.
Many commercial textile products are required by law to have smoke suppressant and flame retardant properties in order to help prevent smoke generation and flame spread in the event of a fire. In order to meet the safety standards required by law, it is fairly common for textile products to be comprised of fibers having flame retardant or smoke suppressant properties. See generally U.S. Pat. No. 4,012,546 to Schwartz et al which discloses a carpet containing flame retardant fibers. Alternatively, many textile products consist of at least two distinct components where a textile material is used in conjunction with various additional backing layers or blocking sheets that impart smoke suppressant and flame retardant properties to a given textile product. For instance, much transportation upholstery material is used in conjunction with separate fire blocking sheet layers. As a further example, many carpets include secondary or tertiary backing layers that have smoke suppressant and flame retardant properties. For instance, it is known in the art to incorporate polybrominated biphenyl oxides, for instance decabromobiphenyl oxide ("decabrome"), or antimony oxide in these additional backing layers of textile products generally, but decabrome is very expensive and antimony oxide may pose toxicity problems.
The present practice of including fire block sheets and separate backing layers to increase smoke suppression and flame retardancy is expensive and is often difficult to incorporate in the manufacturing process of textile products. The present invention, however, solves these problems by incorporating commercially available smoke suppressant-flame retardant intumescent particles in the backcoating of textile products to not only reduce the cost of textile products having enhanced flame retardancy and/or smoke suppression, but also to improve the potential for smoke and flame suppression.